Introduction

In Loughgall in 1987, eight members of the IRA were killed by members of the British Army’s elite unit the Special Air Service whilst attacking a police station (a civilian passer-by was also gunned down by the unit); in Gibraltar in 1988, three unarmed members of the IRA were also killed by the SAS. In 1995 and 2001 the European Court of Human Rights issued judgments which found against the British government in violating Article 2 of the Convention in the case of both sets of killings; the judgments were much welcomed within the Irish Republican constituency – and fed into a process of re-calibrating political legitimacy and deconstructing hierarchies of victimhood undertaken by Irish Republicans in post-conflict memory practices. To bring this process into clearer focus, it will be necessary to undertake a close reading of the text of the Court’s judgments as the basis for examining their confluence with post-conflict memory practices and accommodation by Irish Republicans in a transitional setting. As an intensely political constituency, the latter sought to legitimise the memory of its struggle, undercut the legitimacy of its state opponents, and strip away the perceived ‘demonisation’ of the Republican dead and grieving relatives. Legal judgments and memory practices each played a part in this.